June 8, 2013

How Not to Be Alone

By JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

A COUPLE of weeks ago, I saw a stranger crying in public. I was in Brooklyns Fort Greene
neighborhood, waiting to meet a friend for breakfast. I arrived at the restaurant a few minutes
early and was sitting on the bench outside, scrolling through my contact list. A girl, maybe 15
years old, was sitting on the bench opposite me, crying into her phone. I heard her say, I know, I
know, I know over and over.
What did she know? Had she done something wrong? Was she being comforted? And then she
said, Mama, I know, and the tears came harder.
What was her mother telling her? Never to stay out all night again? That everybody fails? Is it
possible that no one was on the other end of the call, and that the girl was merely rehearsing a
difficult conversation?
Mama, I know, she said, and hung up, placing her phone on her lap.
I was faced with a choice: I could interject myself into her life, or I could respect the boundaries
between us. Intervening might make her feel worse, or be inappropriate. But then, it might ease
her pain, or be helpful in some straightforward logistical way. An affluent neighborhood at the
beginning of the day is not the same as a dangerous one as night is falling. And I was me, and not
someone else. There was a lot of human computing to be done.

It is harder to intervene than not to, but it is vastly harder to choose to do either than to retreat
into the scrolling names of ones contact list, or whatever ones favorite iDistraction happens to
be. Technology celebrates connectedness, but encourages retreat. The phone didnt make me
avoid the human connection, but it did make ignoring her easier in that moment, and more likely,
by comfortably encouraging me to forget my choice to do so. My daily use of technological
communication has been shaping me into someone more likely to forget others. The flow of
water carves rock, a little bit at a time. And our personhood is carved, too, by the flow of our
habits.
Psychologists who study empathy and compassion are finding that unlike our almost
instantaneous responses to physical pain, it takes time for the brain to comprehend the
psychological and moral dimensions of a situation. The more distracted we become, and the
more emphasis we place on speed at the expense of depth, the less likely and able we are to care.
Everyone wants his parents, or friends, or partners undivided attention even if many of us,
especially children, are getting used to far less. Simone Weil wrote, Attention is the rarest and
purest form of generosity. By this definition, our relationships to the world, and to one another,
and to ourselves, are becoming increasingly miserly.
Most of our communication technologies began as diminished substitutes for an impossible
activity. We couldnt always see one another face to face, so the telephone made it possible to
keep in touch at a distance. One is not always home, so the answering machine made a kind of
interaction possible without the person being near his phone. Online communication originated
as a substitute for telephonic communication, which was considered, for whatever reasons, too
burdensome or inconvenient. And then texting, which facilitated yet faster, and more mobile,
messaging. These inventions were not created to be improvements upon face-to-face
communication, but a declension of acceptable, if diminished, substitutes for it.
But then a funny thing happened: we began to prefer the diminished substitutes. Its easier to
make a phone call than to schlep to see someone in person. Leaving a message on someones
machine is easier than having a phone conversation you can say what you need to say without
a response; hard news is easier to leave; its easier to check in without becoming entangled. So
we began calling when we knew no one would pick up.
Shooting off an e-mail is easier, still, because one can hide behind the absence of vocal
inflection, and of course theres no chance of accidentally catching someone. And texting is even
easier, as the expectation for articulateness is further reduced, and another shell is offered to hide
in. Each step forward has made it easier, just a little, to avoid the emotional work of being
present, to convey information rather than humanity.
THE problem with accepting with preferring diminished substitutes is that over time, we,
too, become diminished substitutes. People who become used to saying little become used to
feeling little.
With each generation, it becomes harder to imagine a future that resembles the present. My
grandparents hoped I would have a better life than they did: free of war and hunger, comfortably

situated in a place that felt like home. But what futures would I dismiss out of hand for my
grandchildren? That their clothes will be fabricated every morning on 3-D printers? That they
will communicate without speaking or moving?
Only those with no imagination, and no grounding in reality, would deny the possibility that they
will live forever. Its possible that many reading these words will never die. Lets assume,
though, that we all have a set number of days to indent the world with our beliefs, to find and
create the beauty that only a finite existence allows for, to wrestle with the question of purpose
and wrestle with our answers.
We often use technology to save time, but increasingly, it either takes the saved time along with
it, or makes the saved time less present, intimate and rich. I worry that the closer the world gets
to our fingertips, the further it gets from our hearts. Its not an either/or being antitechnology is perhaps the only thing more foolish than being unquestioningly pro-technology
but a question of balance that our lives hang upon.
Most of the time, most people are not crying in public, but everyone is always in need of
something that another person can give, be it undivided attention, a kind word or deep empathy.
There is no better use of a life than to be attentive to such needs. There are as many ways to do
this as there are kinds of loneliness, but all of them require attentiveness, all of them require the
hard work of emotional computation and corporeal compassion. All of them require the human
processing of the only animal who risks getting it wrong and whose dreams provide shelters
and vaccines and words to crying strangers.
We live in a world made up more of story than stuff. We are creatures of memory more than
reminders, of love more than likes. Being attentive to the needs of others might not be the point
of life, but it is the work of life. It can be messy, and painful, and almost impossibly difficult. But
it is not something we give. It is what we get in exchange for having to die.

________________________________________________________________________
Jonathan Safran Foer is a novelist who delivered the 2013 commencement address at Middlebury
College, from which this essay is adapted.

1. In your own words, summarize the argument the author is making. Cite the article to
support your answer (quotes and/or paragraph numbers).

2. The author quotes Simone Weil, saying, Attention is the rarest and purest form of
generosity. What does this mean? When have you felt the effects of or offered this form
of generosity?

3. Think about how you perceive the way people use technology. If you were going to write
an essay about how technology enhances or diminishes personal relationships, what
would your theme be? Spend some time thinking, then craft a sentence that
communicates that theme. Do not settle for simple, obvious statements like, Keeping in
touch online helps me be in contact with my cousins in another state. Instead, stretch
that idea into a larger precept about what it means to be in relationship with people in a
positive, meaningful way.